Denmark showcases world-biggest offshore wind park

John Acher and Karin Jensen, Reuters 17 Sep 09;

ESBJERG, Denmark (Reuters) - Denmark on Thursday inaugurated the world's biggest offshore wind farm in time to serve as a showcase of its green technological prowess before a global climate conference in Copenhagen in December.

The 91-turbine Horns Rev 2 wind farm off the west coast of Jutland in the North Sea will generate enough electricity for 200,000 Danish households.

"Horns Rev 2 is an important step in our energy policy," Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen told guests gathered for the opening ceremony in the west coast town of Esbjerg.

"It's our ambition that Denmark will be a green growth laboratory," Rasmussen said after he joined Crown Prince Frederik in inaugurating the park on its offshore platform.

World leaders will meet in the Danish capital on December 7-19 to try to hammer out a new global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2012.

Denmark, which gets a fifth of its electricity production from wind, aims for an ambitious treaty in Copenhagen and hopes the conference will boost its environmental technology industry.

"Given that we are hosting the COP15 (climate) meeting in December, this is also a strong signal to the world that investments in renewable energy can go hand in hand with growth and economic development," Rasmussen told Reuters.

"I'm totally convinced it can have a political impact," said Rasmussen, who last week visited India where he said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was working to bring electricity to 100 million Indians without access to power.

"His (Singh's) first priority is to fight poverty and to bring electricity to more people and to do it in a sustainable way, and for that reason it is good to have showcases," Rasmussen said.

The climate talks have stalled over how to share the burden of curbing greenhouse gases between rich and poor nations and on aid to help the poor shift to greener technologies such as solar or wind power.

Rasmussen said there was enormous potential for "green development" and added: "You need cases like this to prove - not only to political leaders but also to their voters and inhabitants - that it is possible to build a bridge between the climate change agenda and bringing prosperity to people."

The 209-megawatt Horns Rev 2 development by state-owned DONG Energy is the offshore wind farm situated furthest out to sea, 30 kilometers off the coast, northwest of Esbjerg.

The 3.5 billion crowns ($694 million) wind park overtakes another Denmark installation, the 166-MW Nysted wind farm -- also DONG Energy's -- as the world's biggest offshore wind park.

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But it will be superseded by the 630-MW London Array wind park in the Thames Estuary once that comes on stream in time for the London Olympics in 2012.

The wind park, consisting of 13 parallel rows of seven turbines each that spread out fan-like, is the world's first to have an offshore accommodation platform that can house up to 24 workers. Plans call for it to be manned year-round.

The turbines are from Siemens and rise to a total height of 114.5 meters above sea level. An additional 30-40 meters are below the surface. Each has a capacity of 2.3 megawatts, and the blade diameter is 93 meters.

Current from the turbines goes by buried cables to a transformer on the platform from where the electricity is brought ashore by a subsea cable.

If a new U.N. climate pact imposes tough emissions cuts, wind power stands to benefit as countries will be forced to turn increasingly to non-carbon renewable energy sources.

(Editing by James Jukwey)

World's biggest offshore windfarm launched ... eventually
Fritz Schur, chairman of Dong, said his firm would triple its production capacity of clean energy by 2020
Terry Macalister, guardian.co.uk 17 Sep 09;

The world's largest offshore windfarm was inaugurated in the North Sea today – with a high-profile display of the intermittent nature of this power source.

Danish Crown Prince Frederik pressed the button to start the Horns Rev 2 project, which uses 91 turbines to generate enough green power for 200,000 households.

But an industry audience brought together in a civic centre to watch the opening via a videolink with the 209MW windfarm, watched in silence as the turbines failed to turn.

Half a minute later as a breeze developed and the first blade slowly began to rotate, there were cheers of relief as much as joy from executives of the developer, Dong, and its guests.

Horns Rev 2, 30 kilometres (16.2 nautical miles) off the coast of Jutland, Denmark, is the largest offshore windfarm but its position will be eclipsed when the Greater Gabbard field comes on stream in Britain followed later by the much larger London Array.

The 3.5bn kroner (£420m) development has some extra significance because it has been put together by a Danish oil company.

Fritz Schur, chairman of Dong, said his firm would triple its production capacity of clean energy by 2020. "Establishing Horns Rev 2 is an important milestone in Dong Energy's gradual transition from conventional to green power generation," he said.

Critics of wind power complain that it is unreliable because of the intermittent nature of wind. But wind executives say this will only be a problem if it replaces most other energy sources. Even then they believe that other forms of clean energy can be used to take up the slack via a much-vaunted super grid to link the whole of Europe's electricity supply.

Niels Bergh-Hansen, head of wind power at Dong, shrugged off the slow start at Horns Rev 2. "The turbines are very heavy and it always takes time to get started. I had faith in the team out there and never doubted it would work fine."

Dong Energy: 'Clean' Denmark's dirty secret
State-owned Dong Energy trades on its green image at home while outsourcing the dirty end of its energy portfolio with coal-fired power stations elsewhere in Europe
Fred Pearce, guardian.co.uk 17 Sep 09;

The Danes like to think of themselves as green. Denmark is home to the world's largest wind turbine manufacturer, Vestas. And today, the giant state-owned energy company, Dong Energy, opens the world's largest windfarm.

But the Danes have a dirty secret. For Dong Energy, while greening its image at home, is busy building coal-fired power stations elsewhere in Europe. First in Germany, and now in Scotland.

We in the rich world are used to the idea of our big companies dumping their dirty and anti-social industries on the poor countries. But now European companies are doing the same to us. Rather as if Scotland were a banana republic somewhere in the developing world, it is the recipient of Dong "outsourcing" the dirty end of its energy portfolio.

Dong, which began as a North Sea oil and gas company before buying the country's electricity utilities, trades on its green image in a country that likes to be thought of as green. Its website announces that the company is "part of the solution" to climate change, and it lovingly pictures its efforts to "move energy forward" on a sea of wind turbines.

Today Denmark's king and prime minister will both be on hand as the record-breaking 209-MW Horns Rev 2 windfarm opens off the west coast.

But Dong also sees itself as a diverse energy provider, and wants to grow in the coal business, too. It would be unlikely to get permission to build a new coal-fired plant at home, however. The Danish government last December proposed that the EU should limit carbon emissions from new power plants to 500g per kilowatt hour – far too low to accommodate a coal-fired plant.

So, what it cannot do at home, it is intent on doing abroad. It is planning to build a giant 1600MW coal-fired plant at Greifswald in northern Germany.

And now in Scotland, Dong is to take a 75% stake in a new joint venture with local company Peel Energy to build a similar behemoth at Hunterston, west of Glasgow.

It would be the first new fossil-fuel burning power plant in Scotland for 30 years – a real step backwards for the country that has pioneered wind power in Britain.

I have written about Scotland talking green and building for coal before. The Scottish Nationalist government is keen to end the country's reliance on nuclear power, and to that end they are covering the glens in wind turbines and dotting the coastline with coal-fired power stations. Dong's new Hunterston plant would be built next to a nuclear power station.

But Dong, like many coal companies, is keen to give the dirtiest fossil fuel a makeover. For instance, it says it will add some biofuels to the coal in the boiler to create a "super-efficient multi-fuel power plant". Both the German and Scottish plants will this way reduce emissions by 20-30% compared to conventional coal power stations, it says.

But sorry, it will still burn coal. Burning coal produces roughly twice the CO2 emissions of even another fossil fuel like natural gas. So that 20-30% cut still leaves it among the dirtiest plants around. WWF estimates the new plant's carbon emissions will be 6.9m tonnes a year. So it would still be outlawed by the proposed new EU rules.

The other greenwash favoured by coal-burners is to hold out the prospect that emissions will soon be cleaned up and buried under ground using carbon capture and storage.

Dong says the construction plans for the £2bn Hunterston plant "include the development of carbon capture and storage", but adds the caveat "once the CCS technology has been fully developed."

As I have written before, that's quite a caveat. By some counts, that day will not happen till towards the end of the plant's lifetime, if at all.

Dong Energy may be an efficient coal-burner. But dressing that accomplishment up as a green technology is greenwash. When it goes on the coal trail, Dong looks like part of the problem, not part of the solution.